The Set Up is a multimedia performative reading that navigates trans subjectivity through narrative tropes and the traps of representation. Erected via the text and scenography, the labyrinthine theatrics of detective fiction, horror, and melodrama establish an identity as a trap from which it is impossible to exit.

The Set Up reflects upon the empty promise of escape through self-actualisation, exploring cinematic and narrative genres as imperfect predictive methodologies for navigating one’s way out of one’s current condition. Structured according to the temporal logic of a joke that never reaches its punchline, The Set Up reflects upon an endlessly deferred belief in the improbable as a strategy of trans counterknowledge against normative attempts at revelation.

Evelyn Wh-ell. The Set Up from Rupert on Vimeo.